T. C. Turberville - Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century

Transcribed from the 1852 Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

A COMPLETE DIGEST OF FACTS OCCURRING IN THE
COUNTY SINCE THE COMMENCEMENT OF
THE YEAR 1800.

BY
T. C. TURBERVILLE.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
1852.

BIRMINGHAM:
PRINTED BY JOSIAH ALLEN AND SON,
3, COLMORE ROW.

THIS VOLUME

IS, BY KIND PERMISSION,

DEDICATED TO

THE RIGHT HON. SIR JOHN SOMERSET PAKINGTON,

OF WESTWOOD PARK, BART., M.P.,

PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES.

In this day the man who writes a useless book, commits a great sin against society. The aim of this volume is utility; although the word, as applied to it, must be interpreted in a very limited sense. Beyond a circuit of a few miles it will have no interest; and even in respect to its legitimate sphere it only assumes to be a record of facts by which the man in public life may refresh his memory as to the particulars of past events, or by which those who have lived and moved amongst the occurrences here set down may call up pleasant associations of things and times gone by. By its means all persons resident in or connected with Worcestershire may possess themselves of a knowledge of the history of the County during the century, besides having at their command a repertory of all the principal events of the locality. It would in many instances have been more gratifying to the writer to have exchanged the chronicle for the narrativethe annal for something more pretentious as a history, but the utility of the book would thereby have been impaired, and he refrained. To have attempted a continuation of Nash would have been mere pedantry, and the mode would have been wholly unsuitable for a record of modern Worcestershire. As for the opinions which may be found scattered here and there on the following pages, the writer is no further anxious about them than as being naturally desirous that what he believes to be truth should be accepted and acted upon by others. But as to the facts professed to be narrated, he hopes that they will be found scrupulously accurate and undistorted by anything like party bias; of the faults of omission, no one can be so conscious as the writer himself, but the book, even now, is larger than he had at first intended. If errors should be found, those whose censure would be the weightiest will readily be able to suggest abundance of excuses, and to their forbearance he unhesitatingly trusts the following pages.

Worcester , October , 1852.

Before entering on a detail of occurrences which possess, comparatively speaking, only an isolated interest, I shall occupy a few pages in the consideration of some general facts and statistics, which may enable the reader to judge of the advance which the County of Worcester has made during a truly remarkable half-century. No former period in the worlds history ever witnessed such mental activity and progress.

The Increase of Population , though not a perfect test of general prosperity, yet indicates that the employments which engage the attention of the inhabitants of any given district are flourishing, that there is no such apprehended deficiency of the articles of wealth as seriously to check marriage, and that there is an absence of some of those evils which are constantly at work to retard the replenishment of the earth by the human family. For the statistics of population in this county I refer the reader to Table 1, in the Appendix, from which he will perceive that a continuous, and in some instances a rapid increase has taken place in the manufacturing districts. Until the last ten years, however, the increase of population in this county, though exceeding that of many counties, did not quite come up to the average increase of the entire kingdom. The rate of increase from 1801 to 1811, was

From 1841 to 1851, the rate of increase for Worcestershire was slightly above the average, being as nearly as possible 13 per cent., while that of England, as a whole, had declined, and was only about 12.7. This is a fact upon which no interpretation can be put, except such as is flattering to the condition and prospects of our county. Emigration has been slowly going on from our manufacturing districts during the last fifteen years, but there has been no remarkable exodus at any particular period. Many farm labourers and small occupants of land have also been seduced by the Mormons to seek an imaginary paradise in the Far West. Even this desultory emigration cannot but be beneficial. Great Britain has yet, however, to acquire the practical wisdom of the ancients in carrying out a systematic colonization, and it still remains for her people to perform the noble mission which their national advantages and insular position seem to assign themthat of peopling the solitudes of the earth with a race which has hitherto proved equal to all difficulties, and who would carry with them the laws of an Alfred, the language of a Shakspere, and, above all, the ennobling influences of the Christian religion.

A tabular statement of Criminals convicted, and of the nature of the sentences inflicted upon them, will also be found in the Appendix. When the improvement in the machinery for detecting crimes and bringing offenders to justice is taken into account, there would not seem to be any serious increase in the amount of crime committed; but there certainly is no room for believing that the intelligence of the age, or the activity of the police, have been successful in diminishing it. Neither does the comparative leniency of the punishments inflicted afford any proof that the crimes committed are less heinous than formerly. The decrease in severity of punishments is to be attributed solely to the amelioration of our criminal code, and the humane desire to reclaim rather than to punish, which now distinguishes our legislature and even pervades the judiciary. Worcestershire, it must be admitted, holds a bad preminence both in respect to the number and character of the offences committed within its boundaries: a recent return, made by order of the Privy Council, assigns it the very lowest place amongst the English counties as to the proportion of criminals to the population, and within three of the bottom of the list in degree of crime.